Skip to main content

Home/ propaganda & marketing/ Group items tagged Threats

Rss Feed Group items tagged

anonymous

Brown warns of enduring al-Qaida threat to UK | Politics | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

  • Brown warns of enduring al-Qaida threat to UK Prime minister says 60,000 civilians have been trained to deal with terrorist incidents
  • Some 60,000 civilians, including shop managers and council workers, have been trained to cope with the threat."Today, not only the police and security and intelligence officers and our armed forces, but also the emergency services, local councils, businesses and community groups are involved in state-of-the-art civil contingency planning,"
  • Gordon Brown today warned that al-Qaida remains the biggest security threat to the UK, as he revealed that tens of thousands of civilians have been trained to deal with terrorist attacks as part of a new strategy to combat extremists.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • By 2011, Britain will be spending £3.5bn a year on counter-terrorism, Brown said. The imprisonment of 80 terrorists in Britain in the last two years was hitting the morale of al-Qaida. Part of the new strategy would address the longer-term causes of terrorism by "understanding what leads people to become radicalised, so we can stop the process".Brown said that more than two-thirds of the plots threatening the UK are linked to Pakistan.
anonymous

Radical Islam stirs in China's remote west - 0 views

  • In a backstreet of the old Silk Road city of Kashgar, Chinese authorities have been spray-painting signs on dusty mud brick walls to warn against what it says is a new enemy -- the Islamic Liberation Party.
  • China says Hizb ut-Tahrir are terrorists operating in the far western region of Xinjiang, home to some 8 million Muslim, Turkic-speaking Uighurs, many of whom chafe under Chinese rule.
  • As in another strife-hit Chinese region, Tibet, many Uighurs resent the growing economic and cultural impact of Han Chinese who have in some cases been encouraged by the government to move to far-flung and under-populated parts of the country. Beijing accuses militant Uighurs of working with al Qaeda to use terror to bring about an independent state called East Turkestan.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • But it seems unlikely they represent the threat to Xinjiang that China likes to portray, said Dru Gladney, a Uighur expert and president of the Pacific Basin Institute at Pomona College, California. "For most Uighurs who are activists, though some of them are very religious in their Islam, their main goal is sovereignty for Xinjiang. Hizb ut-Tahrir doesn't support that. They support a worldwide Caliphate, not any one independent region," he said.
  • In Kashgar, a city close to the Pakistan and Afghan borders, some women not only cover their heads, but also veil their faces. In some cases, dark brown cloths envelope the whole head. Clocks in many mosques, restaurants, cafes and shops are set to Xinjiang time. This is two hours behind Beijing time, the official standard for the entire country, which means China's sun does not set until after 10 p.m. in Kashgar in the summer.
  • Many are not convinced Hizb ut-Tahrir is the threat the Chinese government says it is in Xinjiang. "This does not exist. They have come up with this group's name themselves," said Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the exiled World Uyghur Congress. "They are trying to mislead the world and deflect from concern for the Uighur people."
  • China maintains the threat is real. Hizb ut-Tahrir is likewise banned in countries such as Uzbekistan, where it has also been blamed for violence.
  • In November, China's Xinhua news agency announced sentences ranging from death to life in jail for six Uighurs accused of "splittism and organising and leading terrorist groups", and implicated Hizb ut-Tahrir.
  • "What we want is simple -- freedom," said a Uighur resident of Xinjiang's regional capital, Urumqi, who asked not be identified, fearing repercussions with the authorities. "But there are too many Han and too few of us."
thinkahol *

The decade's biggest scam - Salon.com - 0 views

  •  
    The March, 2011, Harper's Index expressed the point this way: "Number of American civilians who died worldwide in terrorist attacks last year: 8 - Minimum number who died after being struck by lightning: 29."  That's the threat in the name of which a vast domestic Security State is constructed, wars and other attacks are and continue to be launched, and trillions of dollars are transferred to the private security and defense contracting industry at exactly the time that Americans - even as they face massive wealth inequality - are told that they must sacrifice basic economic security because of budgetary constraints. 
thinkahol *

The universality of war propaganda - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com - 0 views

  •  
    Jeffrey Goldberg responded yesterday to my post detailing his long list of journalistic malfeasance by telling me that he and the Prime Minister of Iraqi Kuridstan would like me to travel there to hear how much the Kurds appreciate the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Leaving aside the complete non sequitur that is his response -- how does that remotely pertain to Goldberg's granting of anonymity to his friends to smear people they don't like or the serial fear-mongering fabrications he spread about the Saddam threat prior to the invasion? -- I don't need to travel to Kurdistan to know that many Kurds, probably most, are happy that the U.S. attacked Iraq. For that minority in Northern Iraq, what's not to like? They had foreign countries (the U.S. and its "partners") expend their citizens' lives and treasure to rid the Kurds of their hated enemy; they received semi-autonomy, substantial oil revenues, a thriving relationship with Israel, and real political power; the overwhelming majority of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis whose lives were snuffed out and the millions of people displaced by the war were not Kurds, and most of the destruction took place in Central and Southern Iraq away from their towns and homes, while they remain largely free of the emergent police state tactics of the current Iraqi government. As Ali Gharib put it to Goldberg: "there are at least 600,000 Iraqis who, I imagine, are not too thrilled about the way it all turned out and with whom Greenwald will never get a meeting."
thinkahol *

Noam Chomsky: "The U.S. and Its Allies Will Do Anything to Prevent Democracy in the Ara... - 0 views

  •  
    Speaking at the 25th anniversary celebration of the national media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, world-renowned political dissident and linguist Noam Chomsky analyzes the U.S. response to the popular uprisings sweeping the Middle East and North Africa. "Across the [Middle East], an overwhelming majority of the population regards the United States as the main threat to their interests," Chomsky says. "The reason is very simple... Plainly, the U.S. and its allies are not going to want governments which are responsive to the will of the people. If that happens, not only will the U.S. not control the region, but it will be thrown out." [includes rush transcript]
thinkahol *

The great generational threat - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com - 0 views

  •  
    Defense Secretary Leon Panetta acknowledges how puny is the Al Qaeda menace even as the War on Terror escalates
Arabica Robusta

Responsible consumerism | Manila Bulletin - 0 views

  • The multinational manufacturing giants were trying to cope with changes in technology and demographics which threatened to make them obsolete. Top managements in publicly owned US companies, regardless of size and performance, cowered under the threat of the corporate raider and his ultimate weapon, the junk bond.
  • Corporate capitalism promised that the large corporation would be run in the interests of the greater number of stakeholders. Instead, it was being pushed into a subordinate role – away from its market standing, its technology, and its basic wealth-producing capacity and into immediate earnings and next week’s stock price. A Marxist would call this turn of events “speculator’s capitalism.”
  • Meantime, Bill Gates has come up with a solution as to how billions of dollars generated through capitalism can help people in the poor nations which the world has forgotten. He termed it creative capitalism. He believed that some corporations have identified brand-new markets among the poor for life-changing technologies like cell phones. Others have seen how they can do good and do well at the same time.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • social entrepreneurs are starting companies rather than non-profit organizations, to capitalize on public benefit. To top it all, some of these entrepreneurs choose a new corporate structure that requires enterprises to build into their foundation strong social and environmental standards for their operations.
  • Through Bono’s persistence, the (RED) campaign was launched and today Gap, Hallmark, and Dell, among others, sell (RED)-branded products and donate a portion of their profits to fight AIDS.
  • Corporate America has discovered that social responsibility attracts investment capital as well as customer loyalty, creating a virtuous cycle. Companies are now talking about a triple bottom line – profit, planet, and people – that focuses on how to run a business while trying to improve environmental and working conditions. Some companies have embraced the new ethos.
  • None of this could have happened without consumer demand. In a survey conducted, half of Americans polled said that protecting the environment should be given priority over economic growth – to think that the survey was done amidst a recession and unprecedented record unemployment. Consumers are doing their own calculations and they would prefer comparatively more expensive cars that get better gas mileage, will save them money in the long run, and make them feel good in the process. Walmart, once the poster child of ruthlessness, a retailer whose business in the past was to undercut all its competitors, has resolved to change its way of doing business for the sake of the future of the planet.
  • These days, some companies are cutting back on their philanthropy but not on their Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives
    • Arabica Robusta
       
      How true is this? There are many examples (e.g. BP) of corporations cutting back on CSR.
  •  
    "Capitalism has evolved in at least three different forms: corporate capitalism, speculator's capitalism, and, most recently, creative capitalism."
1 - 8 of 8
Showing 20 items per page